Her Name was Carol

The year is 1950-something. New York city. The scene is the toy department of Frankenberg's. Therese Belivet is staring into space, her toe is bleeding, her career in stage designing is nowhere near Broadway, she is not in love with her boyfriend, she has no family. Then she meets the completely mesmerising Mrs H. F. Aird, first name Carol, a customer looking at dolls as a present for her daughter. Therese attends her with as much professionalism as she can muster, but her heart is lost and when the woman has disappeared behind closed lift doors, she takes a chance and writes a Christmas card. Carol calls her to say thank you then proceeds to invite the impressionable Therese for lunch.

What happens next is a true adventure of the heart. It is as much as a growing up tale, as it is a love story. Carol is the divorced older woman who is given a chance to completely break free and throw caution to the wind. Therese is the young girl who has no real past but chances for an uncertain future with what may possibly be true love. Together, they give in to their desires: they answer the questions of their heart fully and unashamedly. But all is not well, and the fragility of love is put through the test of seperation and persecution.

The novel, initially published as A Price of Salt in 1951, is an undeniable read. In my opinion, it's a beautiful book to read on a rainy day, curled up in bed. It's carless and passionate. There's an amazing trip taken into the American heartland. It calls out to the adventurer and lover in us all. Give it a chance and take the trip down the heady and bubbly road of what we dare call love.

History Hysteria: the Middle East

I am often greeted by raised eyebrows and awkward silences when I tell people that I study history. The reaction is even more astute when I tell them that I actually do like it. But history is the ultimate window in to the history and conscience of humankind. It is both a science and a humanity - its methodology is precise yet its analysis is wonderfully broad.

But more to the point. The Middle East. My interests were tweaked when I started reading A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Otoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle east, written by David Fromkin. Allow me to highly recommend it. It has opened my eyes and deepened my understanding on how such a complex and exotic region became so absorbed in political chaos. The book questions (and partly answers) the actions of European politicians and how they grossly misinterperated a region they knew too little about. The book also highlights a Middle East that was a museum in a 20th Century development buzz. Politically backward with wazirs and tarbushed figures who had little appreciation or understanding for the renaissance of Europe, nor the political flair of the West.

The Ottoman Empire, a giant with a malignant malaise, beautifully disillusioned to the end. Young patriots who through inexperience and desperation, led the Ottomans to their defeat. Sharp politicians who knew so much about too little. Lobbyists, supporters, campaigners, experts. The heroic and foolish. The romantic and false. All heroes and cowards alike.

The Middle East, as we know it today, was the creation of Arabs, Jews, Muslim, Christian, Turkish, British, French - all with their own ideals, their own borders, their own tactics, their own divisions, their own answers to the ultimte question: what to give to whom? The culmination of many many many factors, which miraculously and fatefully created one of the most, if not the most, volatile region in this already unstable world we live in.

To the historian, it is a true wonder. To the human being, we can only hope for the best and pray for the ultimate solution.

General Allenby enters Jerusalem, tactfully on foot.

To be a Pierced Deer

Frida Kahlo.

I believe she's one of the most exquisite painters I can claim to know. Her art is provocative. There's an air of danger to them. Her paintings are like dares : I dare you to feel my pain, I dare you to be loved and hurt, I dare you to fall from dizzying heights, I dare you to look beauty straight in the eye and bite your thumb at her.

But she was more than a painter, and more than life too. She was larger than life, though not in the sense her husband Diego Riviera was larger than life. With her exotic background (her mother was Mexican while her father was German) and her long skirts, she was a painting all by herself; and in fact, she mostly painted self-portraits. She would depict her lifelong physical pain (she was in a horrific accident in her youth) and emotional suffering (she could never have children), yet at the same time there is much beauty in the pain. Her art was encouraged by her husband, also a famous and well-credited muralist. She began painting on her back (the accident broke her spine) and she went on to paint life.

I had the good fortune to see an exhibition of her work. It was in 2005, at the Tate Modern in London. I remember begging my father to bring me and, bless him, he relented, and we went. It was an amazing experience to see her work face to face. I got the feeling of being completely naked while in such presence. It was as if the paintings were judging, taunting, tempting me. She truly is a genius on canvas.

She was portrayed in the film Frida by Salma Hayek, and it's worth a watch if you're interested in knowing a little more about this amazing woman. It's a very good film based on the biography of her by Hayden Herrera, which I also recommend.

Et voila.